Maintained by Robin Tecon, microbiologist and postdoctoral researcher at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zürich. This blog is about bacteria (and other microbes) and the scientists who study them.

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Wednesday, August 28, 2013

A new continent, a new city, a new job

City of Zürich, Switzerland

I did not expect such a long hiatus
on this blog, but here we are: three months since the last post! Although I don’t
plan to blog as frequently as in 2012, I certainly will resume posting every
now and then.

What happened to me during
this three months period is that I left the University of California-Davis and
I moved back to Europe. It was sad to leave California, truly. This is such a
wonderful place, with wonderful people in it. But All things must pass, as George Harrison used to sing. I am now in
the beautiful city of Zürich, Switzerland (my home country). So, I have mixed
feelings right now: missing California but enjoying the discovery of a new city.

My new job is at the SwissFederal Institute of Technology in Zürich; this venerable institution, founded
in 1855, is often ranked as Switzerland’s top university. Initially, the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich
(its official name – you can also say ETH Zürich, or simply ETH, that you
should pronounce Hay-Tay-Ha if you want to be in) was a polytechnic institute,
whose mission, given by the Swiss government, was to educate engineers and
scientists. In 1909, however, ETHZ started to give PhDs and thus became a
university. (Interestingly, Einstein, who is an ETH alumnus, was awarded a PhD
by the University of Zürich. Because at that time, 1905, none were delivered at
ETH!)

Main Building of ETH Zürich

ETHZ has a sister institution
in western Switzerland, the École
Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), which became a federal institute
in 1969. These two universities belong to what is called the ETH domain,
together with four institutes of applied research: EAWAG (aquatic research), WSL(forest, snow and landscape), EMPA (Material Sciences) and the Paul ScherrerInstitute (Environment and Human Health).